Rewriting negative thoughts with affirmations

Have you ever noticed how your mind tends to treat you to constant commentary? Sometimes it’s useful, usually it’s not. Here is the thing, your thoughts form the way you look at yourself and the world around you. They influence how you feel and how you act. Shortly, your thoughts influence how you move through life. As Gandhi nicely puts it:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” ― Gandhi

For most of us our thoughts are just going on unnoticed. Sometimes they are persistent and annoying, they can thoroughly ruin your day. And sometimes they are a nice companion. But what they all have in common is that a lot of people just let them be and are not actively working on changing their thought patterns to match what they want from life. 

THOUGHTS TO CHANGE | to change or not to change that is the question

It’s pretty easy to discern which thoughts are helpful and which are not. Just take a moment to notice how they make you feel. Does it feel good? Or is the thought making you uneasy, sad or even angry? If it’s the latter, then that is a good sign that you need to change something about that thought train. 

“A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.” ― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

You want your thoughts to reflect where you want to be, who you want to be. It doesn’t matter if you believe you are there yet. 

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.” ― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

There is actually research that shows using positive affirmations can help you become more resilient in stressful situations and even improve performance. I will link to some research at the end of this post about the use of affirmations if you want to learn more.

FIELD ANALOGY | let's take a walk

You can see your brain as a big field. You can walk all over the field, connecting one side to the other or going from one wildflower or tree to the next one. You will also notice that there are paths in your field, natural paths that just formed over time simply by you going over that same path over and over again. I'm sure we've all seen those in a field, right?

The same thing goes for your brain. Repeating the same thoughts and thought patterns makes them stronger in your brain. The opposite is also true. Not using the same paths anymore means that they are slowly going to be grown over and the connections in your brain are actually just going to weaken. Because it's not as important for your brain to keep holding on to something that you're not using. That is how we lose information we've learned, simply by not using it, or how we get better at a skill by repeating it over and over again. That's how learning works. And the same goes for your thoughts.

So as we're looking at that field, you see certain pathways. Some are useful pathways, things that actually add value to your life and that help you improve. There are also pathways that are not quite as helpful to you, that don't serve you as well as you would like them to, but it's just easy to take them because they are so visible. Those paths are your negative thoughts. Those are the thoughts that don't make you feel good when they pop up. Those are the ones that we want to change. And you can.

You see the paths through your field. The thoughts just pop up in your mind unasked. But we can actively work on not taking those paths, not holding on to those thoughts. Every time that something pops up in your mind, you don't have to grasp it and hold on to that thought. That is going to make it stronger. You're going to take that path. You're going to keep that path in your field. That's not what we want to do.

What we want to do instead is actively choose a different path. Actively choose a different thought once we notice something popping up that is not serving us. And we can do that. Consistently doing so is going to change the paths in your field. The more positive, actively chosen paths, are becoming more clear in your field. And the thoughts that you didn't really want to keep, that were not serving you are slowly growing back over and turning back into that beautiful field with wild flowers.

The same goes for your brain, the connections from the thoughts that are not serving you. The thoughts will still pop up at first, but as you actively replace them with a different thought. The connections are going to weaken because you're not actively using them as much anymore. Because you notice "hey, something's popping up. I'm taking a different direction", which means that a different thought train, a different connection in your brain is going to grow stronger because you're repeatedly going back to that.

Very shortly, that is how affirmations work. We actively put a thought into our brain, into our mind, and repeat that consciously and continuously to make it stronger. That is where the power of affirmation is.

Even better if you can put some feeling into that. Because adding feeling into the mix is going to make anything stronger. So now that we know that we can actually change these thoughts in our minds, let's take a look at how we can actively do so.

“As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.” ― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

GETTING STARTED | baby steps

Let's start the process of using affirmations step by step. What is a sentence you hear repeatedly in your mind? Is it something that helps you? Great, let it be. Is it something that does not serve you? Let’s rewrite it.

1. Let’s start simple. What is one affirmation/sentence you want to practice this week? Choose an affirmation that feels good. Something that brings you peace, joy or helps to point you in the right direction. Just one, you can add more later. 

   
   

2. Your affirmation can be anything you want as long as it’s positively worded. That means we are not going to use words like "not", "never" or "don't".

   
   

3. Every time you notice the sentence you want to replace pop up in you mind, stop the thought and directly repeat your new affirmation to yourself, at least 3 times. You don’t have to do so out loud but you can if you want to. You can do as many repetitions as you like, just make sure you repeat it more often then the initial thought pops up.

I also like to have my affirmation written down in my bullet journal so I can refer back to it when I need to. You can also write your affirmation on a sticky note and place it on your mirror or anywhere where you will see it every day or even multiple times a day.

Now, whenever you think of it, repeat your affirmation. Repetition is key.

That was is for today. For now, good luck with the next steps on your bridge and I wish you all the happiness and an amazing rest of your day.

❤ Eva

SOURCES

Cascio, C. N., O'Donnell, M. B., Tinney, F. J., Lieberman, M. D., Taylor, S. E., Strecher, V. J., & Falk, E. B. (2016). Self-affirmation activates brain systems associated with self-related processing and reward and is reinforced by future orientation. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 11(4), 621–629. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv136

Sherman, D. K., Bunyan, D. P., Creswell, J. D., & Jaremka, L. M. (2009). Psychological vulnerability and stress: the effects of self-affirmation on sympathetic nervous system responses to naturalistic stressors. Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 28(5), 554–562. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014663

Creswell, J. D., Dutcher, J. M., Klein, W. M., Harris, P. R., & Levine, J. M. (2013). Self-affirmation improves problem-solving under stress. PloS one, 8(5), e62593. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593